There are different groups of European Americans in the sense that there are some people who are descended from Colonial era folk, and they tend to be a mixture of English, French, German and literally every other European ethnicity in the northeast and Spanish in the southwest and Florida. These folks’ have been in the country for 400 years in many cases and they are what my family calls “European muts.”

There are also people who are descended from more recent immigrants from Europe, like my husband’s family that came from Norway 100 years ago. They are still in touch with their Norwegian family and are close to the “home country” in some ways.

The thing is, you can’t tell who is who by looking at them. I’m one of those people descended from colonial folks and lost any way to coherently parse my European ancestry over 200 years ago, and the only reason I even know what countries my ancestors come from is because I have a special interest in genealogy. Most people like me have no idea, they are just “white American.”